


With Hearts So Pure

by A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magical Girls, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Humor, M/M, Magical Girls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 10:40:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17099051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye/pseuds/A_Song_to_Say_Goodbye
Summary: In which Asano Gakushu becomes a magical girl and his life goes to hell. Magical Girl Phala and Shiota Nagisa don't help.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t know if anyone wants it, but here, have the first part of the crack AU I thought up anyways
> 
> Take one guess who the mysterious Phala is. Go on. No, it’s not a trick question.

One fine early morning, after a long night of studying, Asano Gakushū wakes up at his desk as a magical girl.

At first, he thinks he must be hallucinating, because there is no reason whatsoever for him to be wearing this outrageous frilly outfit. Unlike the Chairman, Gakushū has no problem with crossdressers, but that doesn’t mean he’s one of them, thank you very much. And if someone was hoping to convert him to the idea,  _this_ goddamn nightmare was not the way to do so. Why is it so short? Why is it so puffy? And most importantly, how did some bastard break into his house and put it on him without waking him up?

Gakushū picks up the pillow he keeps by his desk and uses it to muffle his outraged screaming. After a few seconds, he re-evaluates his strategy and buries his head deeper so it will smother him.

“Asano-kun, this isn’t the time for that,” comes a somewhat familiar voice that’s equal parts mildly exasperated and uncomfortable but calm. Gakushū startles, nearly falling off the chair, then spots none other than Shiota freaking Nagisa, best friend of that accursed demon spawn who claims to be a human named Akabane Karma, standing inside his bedroom in all his blue-haired, mysterious Class E glory, and what in the  _world_ is going on here?

Shiota moves towards him, looking like he’s about to shake him. Gakushū jerks away. “How did you get in here?” he snaps.

Shiota sort of flaps a hand around vaguely. “I don’t really know, it just happened. Don’t question it. More importantly, you need to go save the city.”

Gakushū’s eyebrow twitches. “Yes, I  _know_ the Chairman is evil, I’ve been working on overthrowing him for years now,” he begins testily.

“No, I mean right now.” Shiota eyes the window with a wary look on his face. “From the monsters.”

“What,” he says flatly. That better be a metaphor.

“This was so much easier the first time,” Shiota mutters. Gakushū resents the implication that he’s being difficult; all his teachers love him. “Okay, well, you’re a magical girl, right? You get some kind of power to go with it, so —”

“Wait,” Gakushū interrupts, his brain putting together the pieces, “ _you’re_  the one who put me in this ridiculous dress?” His fingers start itching with the urge to reach out and throttle him. He’d have expected it more from Akabane; maybe he’d roped Shiota into it?

Shiota laughs uncomfortably. “It wasn’t me, exactly, it was … some kind of higher power? It’s hard to explain.”

His fumbling explanation is cut short by a loud screech and decidedly alien roaring noises. Gakushū looks outside and sees some kind of weird hybrid of three or four dinosaurs zipping by his window. Dangling from its mouth is a screaming child.

Gakushū’s brain breaks. It just can’t deal anymore. And to be honest, he can’t blame it.

“See?” Shiota sighs. “That’s what we need you to deal with. There’s another magical girl stationed here, but there were too many for him to finish dealing with them last night.”

Gakushū grabs the pronoun and latches onto it as his very angry lifeline to system reform. “Him? So you  _regularly_ choose guys for girl roles?” He starts composing a persuasive essay in his head. If he releases it anonymously in enough places—the Internet can be a very useful weapon—and sways public opinion enough to reach whoever’s in charge of this …

“It’s not really a girl role, the name is just a generic term. And I’m not the one who chose you. I just get teleported to random places and have to explain things to magical girls.”

“And you just … go along with it?” asks Gakushū, rather non-plussed by the idea. Why isn’t Shiota planning some kind of secret overthrow or manipulating the real decision maker into letting him out of it? Is this how plebeians do things?

Shiota shrugs. “Honestly, I’m just glad that I’m not the one in a dress this time.”

This time?

There’s a flash of light, and suddenly, Gakushū is back in the clothes he fell asleep in. His profound initial relief evaporates as soon as Shiota opens his mouth and says, “Oh, good, your initial transformation wore off. Now I can show you how to transform.”

Kill me now, Gakushū thinks.

“Just copy what I do.” Shiota spreads his feet till they’re shoulders-width apart and places one hand on the center of his chest. Gakushū stands up and reluctantly follows suit. “Now you say your transformation phase.”

“My  _what_?!”

“Transformation,” Shiota begins, ignoring him, only to suddenly freeze abruptly and adopt a deer in headlights look. “Um. Please don’t try to kill me,” he says.

“Just hurry up and finish!” Gakushū snaps. His humiliation might be inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be long. Besides, it’s still around five am, so the earlier he gets this done, the less of a chance that people see him.

Shiota breathes out a sigh. “Transformation: Amazing Girl Magical Gakushū,” he recites glumly.

“ _What_?”

“Transformation: Amazing—”

“I heard you the first time,” he grinds out. “But why the hell is my name in it?” Now he won’t even have plausible deniability if he has to recite that stupid magical girl name regularly. And screw you, he still isn’t a girl, even if he’s stuck being a magical girl.

A moment later, Nagisa frowns. “Apparently, because the person who picked you as a magical girl is annoyed you aren’t cooperating, so they … okay, he gave you the first magical girl name he came up with. So he’s advising you to start behaving if you don’t want worse.”

Gakushū is completely done with this BS.

Another non-human noise splits the air, a timely reminder that there are bigger priorities here than non-humiliation, so he grits his teeth together and forces out, “Transformation …” He trails off and looks at Shiota, hoping he’ll finally say this is all an elaborate joke set up by Class E. He’s allowed to dream, isn’t he?

Sadly, Shiota just prompts, “Amazing Girl …”

“Amazing Girl Magical Gakushū,” he mutters, giving up.

He’s immediately enveloped in a flash of light that, mercifully, means that he can’t see that stupid dress come on. This time, when the light fades, he’s also wearing a full-face mask that starts at his chin and curves neatly over the back of his head, so at least no one will recognize him.

“Alright,” Shiota nods, apparently satisfied. “Now you’re ready, so let’s go.”

“How?” Gakushū demands exasperatedly. They’re on the third floor, and there’s no way for them to get down to the exit without Shiota being spotted by at least three people.

In answer, Nagisa vanishes, and then his voice comes floating through the window: “This way.”

Gakushū looks out the window and finds Nagisa standing about three meters away in mid-air, completely at ease. “Standing” because his feet definitely seem braced on something. He isn’t wobbling at all, unlike someone who’s floating would be.

Well, it’s better than being spotted by the staff while wearing this ludicrous outfit. Gakushū scowls, removes the screen, and climbs out awkwardly. He may be athletic, but windows are not meant for teenage boys to be climbing out of. Why wouldn’t that damn being have teleported him out with Shiota? Surely the time it would’ve saved is more important than his grudge against Gakushū for his entirely reasonable protests?

He’s not exactly sure what to do after he climbs out, but somehow, his feet hit something solid where there should be air. He checks his feet as he lets go of the window, and sure enough, there’s nothing there. Gakushū looks at Shiota, who simply says, “It’s a magical girl bonus. You also have enhanced regeneration and superhuman durability while in magical girl form. Now you need to go fight monsters.”

“But why do I have to wear a damn dress to do that?”

“I don’t really know, it just comes with the territory. Now come on, Magical Girl Phala needs support.”

“ _Who_?”

* * *

Magical Girl Phala turns out to be another masked boy wearing a dress but clearly enjoying it a hell of a lot more. When they arrive, he’s pulling some kind of crazy backflip crap, dodging two of those weird dinosaur hybrid-ish creatures, and then shoots off a blast of something orange-red — fire? — that destroys them both while he’s still in mid-air. What the hell, was there some kind of magical girl training course that Gakushū missed?

He waves at them cheerfully as they approach. “There you are, Na … ” His voice trails off and turns suspicious. “Who did you bring with you?”

Shiota coughs. “This is Amazing Girl Magical Gakushū,” he says. He is going to die. Gakushū will murder him and leave his corpse to be eaten by the dinosaur hybrids.

“Oh?” says Phala (Gakushū refuses to think of him with the full title), sounding very amused. “Asano-kun’s a magical girl now too?”

Oh,  _damn_  it. It had to be someone he knew? Gakushū replays the sound of Phala’s voice in his head, but the mask muffled it too much for him to identify Phala in turn. It’s especially difficult because Gakushū is sure that he is a lot more memorable to the mindless masses that are his peers than they are to him. This is why he didn’t want his name in the goddamn title!

Shiota makes a helpless sort of noise. “Um. He says he’s sorry your identity was revealed?”

“Like hell he is,” Gakushū growls.

“Well, he’s laughing, so I don’t think he really is,” Shiota admits. “I was trying to be diplomatic about it.”

Gakushū imagines beating in that man’s head. The image almost makes him smile.

He’s brought back to this horrible reality by Phala shooting off another blast of what Gakushū can definitively identify as flame at this distance, especially since he can feel the heat of it washing over him. It vaporizes another dinosaur-ish creature about to sneak up on them from the southeast. “Come on, Asano-kun, you can’t let me do all the work,” he says cheerfully. “It would disgrace Class A for the honors student to stand by when the guy from Class E”—he points at Shiota—“has already done more to help than him.”

Gakushū glares at him. “Fine,” he spits out. “How do I work my power?”

“Concentrate, move, and something will happen,” Phala sings out.

 _You can’t be serious_ , Gakushū wants to say, not because of what he said, but how he said it. Instead, he kicks his foot out experimentally, and a white orb appears. He waits for it to do something, but after a moment, it just vanishes.

Phala claps. “Very impressive, Asano-kun!” he calls.

“Go die!” Gakushū snaps back.

Over the course of the next hour, with an unfortunate level of help from the irritatingly observant Magical Girl Phala, Gakushū works out that the spheres are corrosive to the dinosaur hybrids and respond to some odd combination of his movements and his emotions. The more intense his emotions, the more force the spheres move with when he punches or kicks.

Not that it justifies Magical Girl Phala trying to constantly enrage him.

“You’re so slow, Asano-kun!” Phala calls out gleefully. “I’ve killed ten times as many as you have in the past hour!”

“Damn you, I just started today!” Gakushū snarls back, as a swing of his leg sends an orb shooting towards a group of the dinosaurs.

“I started last week!” Phala informs him as he does some kind of complicated dodge, where the hell did he get this training, is he some kind of acrobat?

“Sorry, K—Magical Girl Phala,” says Shiota. “You know we want to help you, but Karasuma-sensei says …” He darts off a cautious look at Gakushū and laughs nervously. “You know, we should probably talk about this in private.”

Now Gakushū’s interest is piqued. He can guess that the “we” is Class E, featuring the irrepressible horror of Akabane Karma, and to hear that they think they’re capable of handling these dinosaur creatures is a definite hint as to what’s happening there. It must be physical, hands-on, lessons with a strong bend towards practical experience. For a second, he lets himself entertain the absurd idea that they’re all being trained as super soldiers. It’s good for a sorely-needed laugh, at least.

Reluctantly fighting side by side, he and Phala manage to clear the city of monsters in about two hours. Phala informs him that he’d been working for about five hours before he got here too, so either superhuman stamina is part of the magical girl (Gakushū still cringes at the name) package or Phala is just a monster. Gakushū could believe either one at this stage, to be honest.

Aching, tired, and sore, Gakushū climbs back in through his window and collapses on his bed, waiting for the transformation to wear off. Spending the better part of two hours constantly on the verge of throttling his partner isn’t exactly a pleasant experience.

For some godforsaken reason, Shiota appears in his room again. He blinks and says, “Oh, sorry.”

“Even think about telling Akabane about this and you’re dead,” Gakushū threatens, his voice muffled by a combination of his mask and pillow.

“Don’t worry. I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about this except magical girls,” Shiota says.

“That doesn’t make it any better,” Gakushū snarls. Not while  _Magical Girl Phala_  is around. He can’t wait for them to finally split nighttime duties into separate shifts, where he doesn’t have to deal with him.

“Sorry. But you’ll have to get used to it. There’s a lot more monsters here than usual, so you’ll be working together from now on,” says Shiota, before finally vanishing for good.

Gakushū simply stays there, lying on his side frozen in horror, for a good five minutes. Then he groans, rolls back over, and goes back to trying to smother himself.

Asano Gakushū hates his life.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we discover the media reaction to the new magical girls and the plot marginally thickens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please forgive me, I’m an uneducated American who’s terrible at the metric system and distance estimation. Also, I can’t write action scenes. It’s a flaw. I’m working on it.

Of course the first thing Gakushū sees when he walks into class is newspaper headlines about the city’s two new superheroes. Of freaking course.

What even is his life anymore.

Ren waves him over and points to the grainy image someone had managed to take of the dinosaur hybrids. “What do you think it looks like?” he says. “I think it’s some kind of youkai, Araki thinks it might be some kind of historical near-extinct creature, Koyama won’t hypothesize without more data, and Seo thinks it looks like something you might find in—”

“Los Angeles,” Gakushū completes with a sigh. He can’t believe Kunigigaoka’s precious Five Virtuosos have been reduced to  _this_.

Ren’s known him long enough to know to hand over the newspaper. Gakushū takes it with a nod of thanks, then quickly skims it to figure out exactly what they know. Thankfully, it turns out not to be much. The pictures of him and Phala are from too great a distance to tell that they’re both guys, although sadly, you can tell they’re both wearing poofy, impractical monstrosities that some deluded fools may believe can be called dresses.

Gakushū has developed a theory that any given item of clothing is beyond repair once its absurdities can be distinguished in a blurry black and white photograph taken from at least 500 meters away.

“You know, it’s pretty funny how the heroes that everyone’s talking about seem to be girls in party dresses,” Ren says thoughtfully. “I always thought that only appeared in magical girl anime.”

“Yes. Very funny,” Gakushū says, as evenly as he can.

Ren frowns at him. “Um, are you okay?”

“Fine. Why do you ask?” Gakushū gives Ren his sweetest, most innocent smile, the one he usually reserves for convincing people that he’s the epitome of perfection incarnated as a human being, of course he isn’t scheming against his father or them or simply scheming in general.

“Because your nails are digging so hard into your skin that you might be bleeding, you’ve torn the newspaper into shreds and I don’t think you’ve even realized it yet …  andyou’regivingmethehappymurdersmilenevermindpretendIneversaidanything.”

* * *

Now that the initial humiliation has died down, Gakushū is thinking much more clearly. This magical girl farce could be very useful for PR. He won’t be spreading it around, but if it gets out that he’s one of the two mysterious superheroes saving the city, then Gakushū plans to use that as his framework to go public with his quest to take down the Chairman.

Thankfully, they only patrol once a week, so Gakushū only has to suffer  _Magical Girl Phala_  four or five times a month. In his opinion, that’s still far too often, but he’ll take what he can get.

Unfortunately, Phala claimed scheduling rights with an, “I’m the senior magical girl, Asano-kun,” and Shiota took his side, saying, “Well, Phala does have a better idea of when and where they show up.” Gakushū accused him of bias. Phala gasped dramatically and said, “Nagisa? Never!” And then some non-dinosaur monsters (Gakushū is still getting used to the astonishing variety in these creatures) had showed up and ended the conversation before Gakushū could counter. Phala took that as being his victory. Gakushū has yet to get it back.

Now that he thinks about it, Phala and Shiota’s terms of address for each other is rather suspicious. Who’s even that close to Shiota besides Akabane?

In any case, the point is Phala takes a sadistic delight at scheduling their shifts at the worst possible times for him. It’s never a nice reasonable time like 8 pm, always 1 am or 4 am or just any time that can conflict with Gakushū’s schedule and has him scrambling to make excuses. Is that part of his plans to constantly keep Gakushū angry or simply because he’s a terrible person? To be honest, probably both, Gakushū thinks darkly.

As he arrives for their latest shift at the godforsaken hour of 3 am, he wonders what new torture Phala has come up with for him today. Shiota, the traitor, stopped showing up after the first few ridiculously scheduled sessions, bowing out with the excuse of needing to improve his grades. He even took the time to work in a subtle jab at Class A’s earlier sneering at Class E as a justification.

Gakushū grits his teeth at the thought. The seemingly meek, forgettable member of Class E is turning out be nearly as irritating as his bastard of a best friend. Granted, part of that is because Shiota is the who dragged Gakushū into this “magical girl” business, but another part is entirely Shiota’s pesky self to claim.

He’s so carried away by his mental tirade against Shiota that it takes him a moment to spot Phala on a skyscraper. Holding a goddamn  _disposable cellphone_.

His sneaking suspicion is confirmed as he draws closer to Phala. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you who lies behind the mask of Magical Girl Phala, no matter how curious your readers are. It doesn’t matter. My partner and I are just two concerned citizens doing our best to help our community,” he says, voice so sweet that Gakushū nearly gags on the syrup. Thankfully, Phala has the sense to have pitched his voice higher. It sounds absolutely ludicrous, but it’s also androgynous.

He can hear Phala’s smirk from here. “Oh, my partner? Yeah, their name is—”

Gakushū gets there just before he can finish that atrocious title. “Phala, I’ll kill you,” he says just as sweetly, making sure to pitch his voice up as well. The one good thing about this magical girl nonsense is that he can say whatever he likes without being held to the Kunigigaoka standard.

“Just trying to make sure you’re nice and fired up today, Amazing Girl Magical Gakushū,” Phala returns, snapping the phone shut. He gives him a winning smile, so winning that Gakushū can actually see it through the mask’s mouth slit.

He can’t tell whether the call ended or Phala called him by that horrendous name first. God _damnit_.

* * *

The ultimate proof that the universe is against the existence of Asano Gakushū comes when, in one of his increasingly rare spots of free time, he runs into Shiota Nagisa and the accused Akabane Karma in town.

“Fancy seeing you here, Asano-kun!” Akabane says. His eyes are lit up golden-bright in the late afternoon sun, like they’ve been replaced with a pair of coins. He smiles, but it’s more like he’s baring his teeth in challenge.

God, Gakushū forgot how much he hates Akabane. Hates that stupid, arrogant smirk and the brilliant but inhumane gleam of his eyes. They’re starting to drive him insane.

“Karma, you shouldn’t just stop in the middle of the street, you’re blocking the way,” says Nagisa. Then he sighs, shakes his head, and decides, “Never mind.” He lifts a hand as a farewell and starts to walk away. “I’ll catch up to you later,” he calls back. “If you’re still there in twenty minutes, I’m calling Isogai.”

“Even your best friend’s given up on you, Akabane. You’re a hopeless cause,” Gakushū snarls at him.

Karma’s smile widens as he slides his hands into his pockets and takes a step forward. “Oh, really? I’m pretty sure he was just bored watching me take out the trash, Second Place.”

Neither of them says anything for a moment. There’s something exhilarating between them, a sort of crackle and electricity in the air. It makes Gakushū feel acutely alive, like he’s on top of the world and still riding the euphoria. Not that he would ever tell that to Akabane. It makes him sound like some kind of uncouth adrenaline junkie.

The animosity growing between them is disrupted by a shout, one so angry it catches both their attention. They whirl around simultaneously to find a police officer chasing a man who’s clutching an expensive purse to his chest and making a run for it.

The gears in Gakushū’s brain click to life. An idiot of a purse snatcher whose brains are far exceeded by his physical skills, stupidly stealing a purse in the vicinity of a policeman and now trying to escape the consequences of his foolish actions. How laughable, he thinks, watching the desperate man zigzag around stalls, shoving pedestrians.

It stays laughable right until the moment when the snatcher suddenly changes paths and grabs a startled Shiota, who was twenty meters down the street, catching his throat in the crook of his arm and jerking it up to Shiota’s chin to cut off his air.

“N-nobody move or the girl gets it!” the would-be criminal shouts nervously. There’s still a dark sort of comical feeling about this whole situation, what with the man’s sheer incompetence. And did he just hear yet another person mistake Shiota for a girl?

On the other hand, the knife he’s holding at Shiota’s throat is anything but comical. He must’ve used it to cut the purse strap, Gakushū thinks. It’s at least 25 cm long and gleams brilliantly in the sunlight. He’s uncomfortably aware of how sharp it is.

Gakushū’s mind is racing with strategies. There’s a weird adrenaline in him, a mix of  _This is excellent practice_  and  _But if I screw up, Shiota may **die**_ , and for all his complaints about the magical girl catastrophe, he’s never wanted Shiota to get hurt. Asano Gakushū manipulates people out of his way; he doesn’t injure them into it.

He steps forward to start trying to talk Shiota out of this mess—if all else fails, he can initiate transformation and use the resulting light as a flash grenade—but he feels a hand land on his arm.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” says Akabane to the criminal, sounding …  _bored_? What is wrong with him? This is his supposed best friend!

Gakushū opens his mouth to demand just that, except he’s interrupted by a blur of motion where Shiota’s supposed to be, and suddenly, the hostage taker is keeling over with his knife in his gut, and Shiota is walking back to them as if nothing had happened. “Sorry for the holdup,” he says, looking a little sheepish. Behind him, the police officer finally arrests the would-be thief. “I was a little slow in finding an opening. Thanks, Karma.”

Gakushū’s jaw drops down and stays down. Everyone in Class E is absolutely  _insane_.

* * *

Gakushū can’t fathom the absolute trust that must exist between Akabane and Shiota for Akabane to simply let Shiota handle the situation by himself when taken hostage. No, not only to handle it himself, but to handle it himself without discussion or doubts about his ability or even any apparent concern for his health at all. Akabane has absolute confidence in Shiota, and isn’t that a strange thing? Akabane is not the type of person who has things such as faith, and Shiota is certainly not the kind of charismatic person to inspire it. Gakushū has seen Shiota pull off some incredible stunts, and he still falls for that meek and mild routine of his. He supposes that title of “best friend” isn’t for nothing.

Still, something about Akabane’s bond with Shiota bothers him, and the fact that it bothers him bothers Gakushū even more. He can’t pin down why. He has no real reason to care about two Class E rejects, even if one of them is his academic rival. He and Shiota have no connection outside this magical girl debacle, and Akabane’s near-magical ubiquitousness even seems to have died down recently.

Speaking of which, Shiota is trying to talk to him again, having actually showed up to one of his and Phala’s sessions for once. Even more strangely, Phala shut up and is staying about thirty meters away from him after Shiota said something to him at the beginning. Is Shiota simply some kind of people whisperer? A budding sociopath whisperer? “About today,” Shiota says, for the umpteeth time.

“I. Don’t. Care!” Gakushū works out through a clenched jaw. He channels his rage into his next kick, and much to his surprise, the white sphere that goes flying towards the monster cluster explodes. Actually explodes.

“No, but really,” Shiota insists. “I need to talk to you.”

Gakushū stops and gives the pesky persistent brat his attention, if only to get him to go away so that Gakushū can focus on not dying. “I told you, I don’t  _care_  about your relationship with Akabane—”

Shiota coughs delicately. “Actually, I was talking about the stabbing part,” he says.

“Oh,” Gakushū says, feeling quite stupid. It’s obvious, once he thinks about it, but he’s spent the past six hours with this matter sitting in his head, so his perspective has been warped.  

“Wow, you really have a … unique sense of priorities. You’re just like Karma, I swear,” Shiota mutters. “Isn’t one of him enough?”

“Rude,” says Phala, approaching. “Akabane Karma is a delight and a gift to the universe. Anyone should be overjoyed to have two of him around. Asano Gakushū, on the other hand …”

Gakushū kicks a sphere at Phala. “Of course you, of all people, would appreciate Akabane,” he snaps as Phala dodges, still grinning all happy and carefree like a maniac. “I don’t know what Shiota’s saying, you’re the one who’s just like him.”

Shiota’s eyes widen. “You mean you don’t … ?” he says, then trails off. “Oh. Right. Not allowed to talk about that.” He laughs awkwardly.

“About what?” Gakushū demands. The idea that Shiota’s keeping something from him is both angering and worrying. If it’s important and he doesn’t know it, God knows what will happen.

Shiota shakes his head. “Sorry, but I really can’t tell. The same person who made you Amazing Girl Magical Gakushū—”

“ _Shiota_.”

“—says I can’t talk about it, and I don’t want to know what he’ll do to me if I don’t listen. He let Phala pick his title, and then look at what happened to you.”

“Wait,  _what_ ,” Gakushū says dangerously, his eyes narrowing.

Phala pats him on the shoulder, and Gakushū slaps his hand away. “Now, now, Asano-kun,” he says. Gakushū just about lifts his hands to strangle him. “We can’t all be as lovable as I am.”

Inside his head, Gakushu screams.

* * *

Hours later, Gakushu is sitting at his desk and mulling over the situation. It’s sometime around five in the morning. He hasn’t slept at all because of the churning in his stomach. He feels a little like he wants to vomit.

He’s never been very good with feelings — the chairman is the type of father who tells you to repress everything and concentrate on your work, things like emotional and mental health are for quitters and commoners — but it’s become so distracting that he has to figure it out or else he’ll lose to Akabane in next month’s exams in a landslide. Why is he so pre-occupied by the idea of Shiota and Akabane having a deep bond?

For the thousandth time, he runs over the events of that day — or yesterday, rather, since it’s so early now. A blurry series of images runs through his head. Akabane’s hand on his arm, the calm sound of his voice, Shiota’s blur of motion as he somehow just disarms and stabs a man without hesitation like it’s easier than tying shoelaces. Thinking about it only increases the uneasiness.

He tries to think about it rationally. This is some kind of negative emotion that he hasn’t been able to identify. Well, according to the Bible, there’s seven sins, he might as well start there. His lip curls. It’s better than  _Googling_  it as  _simpletons_  might.

The first is sloth, but that’s Akabane, not him. Greed? Gakushu is fairly certain he’s better off than either of them, so that’s probably not it. Gluttony? Well, Akabane is a glutton for punishment, but that’s him getting sidetracked. Wrath, no. Gakushu is intimately familiar with that. Lust? Gakushu starts laughing so hard at the absurdity of it that he thinks he might break a rib. Envy —

His train of thought breaks off when the realization dawns. His head snaps up in horror. It can’t be.

But it feels horrifyingly right. Crucified Christ, it couldn’t be something simple, like a begrudging desire to ask Akabane to team up with him to build a nuclear reactor. No, he’s envious. He can’t believe it. He’s  _envious_. Of Akabane Karma, who’s destined for his own pocket of Tartarus, and Shiota Nagisa, the only person at Kunigigaoka who can give Gakushū a run for his money in the “bad parent” department.

He’s still a little off about that, he knows that for sure. But the niggling feeling and the nausea have settled down some, so he knows he’s on the right track. What’s wrong with his life that he could possibly feel envious of them? Gakushu’s in  _Class A_. He speaks several languages, has most of his elite school eating from his hand, and regularly learns college-level material in class.

A thought pops up in his mind: since the term envy seems to fit so accurately, could it be that he’s only envious of one of them?

He shuts that thought down hard. The implications of it either way are not something he wants to contemplate.


End file.
